Game of Thrones: Jawfulness, torture by rats and demon birth

With a title like Garden of Bones, you’re gonna have to expect some killing. What you perhaps didn’t expect is the means of the killing. It’s pretty rich. So we’re nearing the halfway point of season 2 and this episode might set us up for some significant future alterations to the source material.

Nuts and bolts summary:

Open on two Lannister soldiers. It’s night time. The horses are spooked. Tension builds. The music swells. One of them farts. He then takes a leak which is interrupted by a direwolf ripping out his throat. The old bait-and-switch. And there’s Robb (King in the North!) and his men about to pop the cork on a bottle of conquest. Presumably to save some money we go straight to the aftermath of the battle, which has gone Robb’s way. Roose Bolton makes an appearance by Robb’s side. He likes the idea of flaying captured Lannisters. Robb’s not really having it. Roose likes flaying. More later, trust me.

A woman named Talissa saws off a guy’s wounded leg, which already has “the rot.” You do not want “the rot.” Robb seems to like her a lot, even though she gives him guff for all the fighting: A bunch of kids with blades stuck in their hands fighting for the rich. She does have a point.

A brief break from the summary: Before the season started the actress who plays Talissa, Oona Chaplin, was tipped to play Jeyne Westerling, who matters a lot more in Book 3. So I guess we have to wait and see. But this seems an intriguing and fairly major step away from the source material. I suppose it’s possible that there’s another Jeyne in wait. Or that Talissa is a made up name, though sawing off legs on the battlefield isn’t something she did in the books. Bolton, also, seems to be diverging some from the text. But still I trust the show’s runners with the story.

Cut to Jawfulry aiming a crossbow at Sansa. He’s cranky that Robb handed his forces another defeat. He orders Ser Meryn Trant to rip off her clothes and knock her around (“But leave her face, I like her pretty.”). A brief moment to remark on the acting of young Jack Gleeson. I must commend the kid for taking on what is perhaps the most despicable role in the history of TV and doing it with pitiless panache. Anyway, Tyrion intervenes with an assist from Bronn, who gets the episodes finest lines starting with his barb at Ser Meryn: “Careful now, we don’t want to get blood all over your pretty white cloak.”

Jawf does his petulant “I’m the king, I can do what I want” thing and Tyrion reminds him of the fate of Mad King Aerys. Meryn takes that to be a threat on the life of the king. “That was not a threat, I was educating my nephew,” Tyrion says. “Bronn, next time he speaks, kill him. THAT was a threat. See the difference?”

They escore Sansa out. Bronn floats the theory that Jawf needs to get laid. “Do you think dipping his wick will cure him?” Tyrion asks. And then Bronn gets the best line on TV since “Eastbound”‘s “no ‘i’ in team” bit: “There’s no cure for being a < *%+.”

Tyrion orders up a couple prostitutes for Jawf, who proceeds to make one beat the other savagely and have the one do untoward and uncomfortable things to the other with a stag’s head staff while he points his crossbow at them. This, of course, takes place amid copious nudity.

Cut to Littlefinger leering and conspiring in the presence of Margaery Tyrell. Mostly stuff about King’s Landing, suggesting Renly can undertake a protracted siege or perhaps find the gates wide open.

Cut to the desert: Dany’s crew looking particularly raggedy but one of her riders returns on a new horse. Qarth is but a few days away. They’d be honored to host the mother of dragons.

Cut to Arya and the Knight’s Watch recruits incarcerated at Harrenhal. Sounds of torture.

Cut to Cat at Renly’s camp. Littlefinger makes a play and she pulls a knife on him. He lies and says he has both Stark girls and that Tyrion would trade them for the Kingslayer. And he leaves a box behind, presumably with Ned’s remains so that they may find their way to the crypt at Winterfell.

Cut to Harrenhal with some interrogation going on. It consists of putting a rat in a bucket and strapping the bucket to the subject’s midsection. Then flame is applied to the bucket prompting the rat to eat/claw its way through the subject. This seems an awful way to go, even by Westeros standards.

Cut to Renly and Stannis each with stag banners, neither acting very brotherly. Renly kind of funs it up. When it’s suggested that Stannis is “born amid salt and smoke,” Renly asks, “Is he a ham?” Zing! Stannis gives him one night to strike his banners.

Cut to Qarth. The expanse outside it is called the Garden of Bones, because if one is turned away from the city, well, he’s pretty much screwed. An anonymous representative for the city will let Dany and her crew in but he wants to see the dragons first. She wants food and water and entry and then she’ll break out the dragons. She also mispronounces the name of the city. But then she gets all dragony threatening to return one day with her dragons when they’re grown and torch the city. One Qarthian vouches for her by taking his knife to his own hand (not a giaresmea but more a smaresmea) and her group appears to have been saved.

Cut to Harrenhal where the rat torture guy’s head gets pounded onto a spike. Gendry’s about to get the rat treatment when Tywin arrives and breaks up the fun. He knows Arya’s a girl, not a boy, but doesn’t know she’s a Stark. So he takes her out of the genpop and as his aid.

Cut to King’s Landing where that little twit Lancel tries to play tough guy with Tyrion, “Imp this” and “Imp that.” But Tyrion threatens to alert Jawf that their cousin is boffing Jawf’s mother. Lancel is sniveling in an instant.

Cut to Davos and Stannis talking about Davos’ fingers, which he wears around his neck for luck. Stannis took them off with a cleaver years before, punishment for Davos’ smuggling. Stannis asks him to be a smuggler once more, though. He needs him to transport Melisandre somewhere.

So Davos paddles Melisandre to a cave where she promptly derobes exposing a pregnant belly. She starts groaning and heaving her chest and shoots out a black, misty demon spawn. Davos cowers. I cower with him.

Roll credits.

The scorecard (scale of 1 to 10)
Wolf carnage: 7; brief but satisfying.
Rat torture: 10; who thought that up the first time?
Jawfulness: my computer has no infinity key; he was off the charts this week
Bronnisms: 10; he and Tyrion are quite a quippy pair
Amputations: 10; saw saw saw saw saw saw
Nekkidness: 10; and it didn’t even require a trip to the brothel
Graphic, naked birthing of mysterious smoke monster spawn: 10; self-explanatory

6 Responses

I’m all for varying here and there from the books, as well as for gratuitous nudity (I think HBO is contractually bound by the FCC for showing T&A and/or D in every episode to remind us all why we’re paying so much more for it), but the scene with Jawfulry and the prostitutes was something I could have done without. I mean, we KNOW he’s jawful; we don’t need any more convincing. Also, my inner prude was wondering the whole while how old the guy playing Jawfulry is and whether he really knew what he was asking those women to do with the stag-head staff.

I really like these outlines of the episodes, having just caught them last week. I have one request though; is there any way to get more detail on how the show parts ways with the books? The author has long used nudity and sex in his works, Wildcards coming to mind even though he only writes a few characters, but is that the major area of departure in most cases (making the show fight for the perve audience from the various Spartacus mini-series)?